Dear Diary: The Sicilian
For days, I’ve been stewing over how long it has been since my last visit to the storage unit, on 62nd Street. Something must be done! That’s really how I put it to myself — which explains why nothing happens. “Something must be done!” means just about nothing. “Go to the storage unit this week” is all too clear. I was avoiding clarity.
On Friday, however, I’m scheduled, as I mentioned the other day, to have a Remicade infusion. That rules out going to the movies, at least during the day. Nothing would be over in time. So I’d have to go sooner. Yesterday, surveying my worksheets — yes! it has come to that! worksheets! — I figured that I could spare the time for a movie this morning, and, what d’you know, but a movie that I’ve been wanting to see, In the Loop, is showing right next door to the storage unit. How dandy! I’d see the movie, have lunch at a nearby pub, and then spend an hour or two in storage — boxing books. The current plan is to pack books in boxes and then have Housing Works come pick them up. I’m told that they’ll do that. (We’ll see.)
We stayed up very late last night, and got up correspondingly late this morning. Kathleen got up very late. If I’d left when she did, in fact, I’d have been just a few minutes early for In the Loop. But I wasn’t feeling very well; there were gastro-intestinal issues (phantom, as it turned out), plus the malaise that follows a late night of drinking wine until Kathleen goes to bed. Did I say that Kathleen was obsessing over the knitting of bootees? So often, that’s how late nights happen. I saw Kathleen off to work, and went to the computer, where I sat most discontentedly. “I’ll go tomorrow,” I told myself. But this proved to be unacceptable. A part of me — the largely unfamiliar Sicilian part — had been assured that we’d be going to the storage unit today. The Sicilian part of me is not prone to violence, but it is very ascetic. It is most unhappy when suffering is on the menu, but only on the menu. The Sicilian part of me also wants to get things over with.
So I was running late when I got to the movies. Not late-late; if all had gone well, I’d have missed a couple of previews, no more. But all was not going well. The box office couldn’t take credit cards; it was a problem with the connection. I never pay cash for the movies (or for anything that will take plastic), but I’d have made an exception this morning if I hadn’t been quite late — because it took forever for the customer at the head of the line to decide how she wanted to handle the outage. Would she pay cash? Would she come back later? When I asked and found out that I’d have to pay cash at the refreshment counter, too, I turned on my heels and went next door to storage.
The reason for the “Something must be done!” mentality is that we are paying a fortune — in many parts of the United States, it would cover a nice one-bedroom apartment — for vastly more storage space than we need. We could have what’s left just packed up and moved to another, smaller storage unit uptown (in a facility operated by the same outfit). But I’m determined to shed the books that make up a large percentage of current contents. When the books are gone, we’ll have a better idea of how much storage space we really need. Or so I rationalize.
Having surveyed the dump, I went back downstairs and bought six “large” packing boxes. Even before I paid for them, I knew that they were too big for books; they’d be impossibly heavy if packed full. As indeed they were. On my way back to the elevator, I realized that I didn’t have any strapping tape. I decided not to buy any at this time. I would unfold a couple of boxes and fill them and see how it went. This was not the dumb idea that it may seem to be. The experience of putting books in a box, even knowing that they’d all have to be packed in some other box, was nothing short of inspiring. I can’t wait to go back and buy six “small” packing boxes. I’ve already got the tape; I picked it up at Gristede’s when I was shopping for dinner.
Having filled two large boxes, I decided to quit. I stuffed some junk in a tote — a bunch of trays, as it happened — and went to the pub. Then I went home. The Sicilian part of me was still not satisfied. What about the movies? Now, for most people, going to the movies is fun. And it is for me, too! But it is also an assignment. If I’m supposed to see a movie on Friday, but know in advance that I won’t be able to see a movie on Friday, the Sicilian part of me takes a very dim and jaundiced view of proposals that involve going to the movies on the weekend. The Sicilian part of me knows that going to the movies on the weekend is almost certainly not going to happen. This is because I myself detest seeing movies on the weekend, when the theatres are relative full. I like empty theatres.
So I looked at what was showing in the neighborhood. The good news is that thirteen different movies are showing within two blocks of my house. The bad news is that more than half of them are always out of the question. Also bad news, on a day like today: I have usually seen the aceeptable movies already. Pretty quickly, this afternoon’s choices came down to two: The Hurt Locker, which I’d like to have seen (if you know what I mean), and The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, which (I checked) has a Metacritic rating of 41. Did I really want to see Jeremy Piven play a slobulesque hustler? No. But it was a less-sharp stick in the eye. A less-sharp stick in the Sicilian-part-of-me’s hand.
When I crossed 86th Street on my way home, I noticed that the sun was hot. It was as though a broiler-oven had been opened behind me, and waves of heat were pouring out. This heat thing has got to come to an end soon. I’m bearing up better than I’ve done in the past, but it’s like life in wartime: I’m doing without a lot of stuff “for the duration.” Maybe, though, the heat is making the Sicilian part of me feel more at home. How on earth else explain my trip to a purgatorial storage unit on a blazing day?